


The Doctrine of Signatures

by Jackie Thomas (Jackie_Thomas)



Series: The Doctrine of Signatures [1]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Episode: s06e01 The Soul of Genius, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:55:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2025894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackie_Thomas/pseuds/Jackie%20Thomas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A remedy for existential flu</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Doctrine of Signatures

While he waits for Lewis to come out of Michelle Marber’s house James thinks of beautiful nonsense; the hunting of the Snark, the signature of all things, the doctrine of the holy Catholic Church. Not so long ago, he came close to giving up his life to a book of fabulous tales and would not be surprised if one day he tried to do it again. 

Lewis will be explaining to Mrs Marber that it is now possible for her to relinquish the burden of her delusions, to shut down her incident rooms, both mental and actual. If he had known Lewis back then he might have been saved a lot of heartache. Lewis with his calm rationality would have made him question his motivations, permitted him to abandon his personal Snark hunt before it got so bloody.

Lewis himself would have been a different man then, before life swiped its claw across his existence. He would have had other, more pressing concerns; the uproar of family life, the cryptic clue that was Chief Inspector Morse. James is aware of occupying a place in Lewis’ present life which is surprisingly ill-defined for one who is acknowledged in the linear algebra of police hierarchy to be a possession. He is the inspector’s sergeant in a way the other ranks don’t quite own each other. He is pleased by the steadying idea and Lewis, in turn, takes his responsibility seriously. And yet there is more than that. There is something else between them which he cannot give shape or name to; an intermittent pulse broadcasting on their personal communications network, an impenetrable dot-dot-dash of code.

Other, clearer transmissions come through all the time. Lewis has been sending ‘what’s the matter with you?’ signals since this case started. James has evaded, though he knows how he gets when he tries to survive on nicotine and police work. He cannot express the extent to which he sees his fate laid out in the bleak obsessions of those who have crossed their path, these alchemists of air. James fixes his devotion to something and then cannot prise it away; his first guitar, the Medieval Christian philosophers, slightly long in the tooth Detective Inspectors. Pat Methaney, William of Ockham, Robbie Lewis. His brain may be measurable in tonnage but it is almost impossible to make it turn or reverse. 

For Lewis the solution is simple; family, people, love. He wants to drink champagne at James’ wedding, he wants to hold his babies. He doesn’t care whether the person James finds himself is girl, boy or none of the above, he wants him settled. He must at least partly understand, James could as easily grasp a dissolving dream as accomplish such a feat.

Lewis startles him by opening the driver’s side door and nudging him out of his seat, “Go on, I’m driving.” 

James doesn’t bother to question why he has to be a passenger in his own car but goes round to the other side with only a token show of resistance.

“How did it go?”

“Hard to say,” Lewis replies, adjusting the seat. “I think she believed I wasn’t lying to her. Whether she thinks I’m deluded is another matter.” He looks at his watch. “Now. Where are we? Two thirty, gives us plenty time.”

“Back to the station?” James asks.

“We’ve got the afternoon off. I’ve cleared it with Innocent. We’ve been putting in the hours, especially some of us, time we got one or two of them back.”

The last thing James wants is an afternoon at home with nothing to do. “I need to get back and –“

“Do you fancy a drive?” 

James stares at him, “What are you up to?”

“You’ll find out when we get there.”

“Sir?”

“You’re quite safe. And I’ll buy you an ice cream.”

“Oh.” He senses something behind the request; a significance, even an urgency it would be wrong to deny. “In that case.”

They actually leave Oxford, which is unheard of in a non-work capacity and head down the motorway toward the Chilterns. When they turn on to an A-road and then a B-road things start getting rural.

“If you’re looking for somewhere to dump my body you could at least have the decency to kill me first.”

“Just because we’re more than a hundred yards from an espresso machine it doesn’t necessarily mean something bad is going to happen.” 

James doesn’t bother with a smart retort. He’s happy to be on a mystery tour with Inspector Lewis, he doesn’t really care where they’re going.

They pass through a village of expensive looking thatched cottages and on to a quiet lane. Lewis slows down to look for a landmark, mutters at a hedge, reverses and then finds an anonymous gap just wide enough to get the car through. The unmade path they follow winds upwards on a gentle slope, gloomy because of a dark canopy of tree branches and a dense growth of shrubs and bramble. At the end of the path there is a house, or what is left of one. Lewis says, ‘here we are’.

The house is a roughly sketched square of weathered brick. There are two floors though arched windows like lidded eyes above the eaves suggest a third storey of attic rooms. On the far side, at the back, a fallen tree has crumbled part of the wall and roof away. Ivy and other climbers consume the brick, and tree branches tap against cracked or boarded windows.

It is not a large house but there is an eccentric irregularity to its design which seems to extend its stature. There is an iron-wrought porch on one side of the boarded front door, and a curved wall on the other gives the effect of a tower. There are extensions and lean-tos, too many corners for the eye to make sense of, a curious assortment of windows and something that might be a turret. James turns to find himself, not the house, the focus of Lewis’ attention.

“Have you bought this house, sir?” He asks.

“I’ve had an offer accepted on it.”

“Wow. It’s going to be -, I mean, it’s amazing.”

“I know it’s a shell but it’s a grand old place. It just needs a bit of work and care.”

“You’ve been house hunting?”

“No, but I’ve been thinking about buying somewhere. For holidays and weekends at first. This is the place Smith has been on about.”

James recalls an intense conversation in a pub with DI Smith complaining to Lewis about some long dead second cousins.

“It belongs to his dad’s side,” Lewis says. “There was a family dispute which meant none of them would take responsibility for it. The last of that generation died and the cousins are cutting their losses and selling. Come on, I’ll show you the back.”

He leads James around the side of the house where tree roots crack the ancient path and the tangle of blackberry has been cropped back so there is just enough room to pass. It is still possible to discern where the garden had once been though the low wall enclosing it has been pushed aside by uncontained growth and only a stone barn holds the border.

“I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this,” Lewis says in his ‘why aren’t I retired?’ voice.

A stream separates the end of the garden from a neighbouring field and two apple trees bow ripening branches toward it. And then, breathtakingly, the garden opens out to the hills beyond, sensuous in shades of muted green and gold.

“Finish your fag, and we can have a look inside.”

There had been a padlock on the front door but the back door just pushes open. “Watch your giant arms and legs,” Lewis says. “It’s a death trap in there.” 

“Is that how you plan to welcome all your guests?”

Their entrance sends the current residents scurrying and flying for cover. James shines a torch he finds by the door and sticks close to Lewis because spiders are famously unfazed by approaching humans. 

The back door leads into the kitchen where ‘1879’ is carved into a stone lintel above a fireplace. The kitchen leads into a series of smaller rooms cleared of furniture and stripped down to peeling wallpaper and bare boards in preparation for the sale. A small bathroom adjoining a bedroom has been wrecked by the fallen tree.

“I thought I could put some French windows in,” Lewis says as they inspect a room with a perfect view of the garden.

“Well, yes, but you want to be in keeping with the period, you don’t want Everest sticking UPVC all over it.” Lewis gives him a long look. “But yeah,” he amends. “French windows.”

Another temptation for the twenty first century would be to knock through but James warms to the cosy labyrinth of asymmetrical rooms, the passageways leading nowhere and the unexpected steps.

“It’s an odd sort of house, isn’t it?”

“Smith said the children in his family always called it the Wizard’s House.”

“Kids always know.” It is a spreading enchantment, this house. Not built but grown. He traces the shadow a quartered porthole window makes on a wall. “Like there’s a message concealed in it.”

“Maybe there is, James, maybe there is.”

The house is no less strange upstairs with a master bedroom and three smaller rooms, one full of tree and one perfectly round. At the top of a broken spiral staircase there are an unknown number of attic rooms.

“No bathroom but the small bedroom could be converted,” Lewis murmurs, making plans. James sees that in Lewis’ mind the house is already his. It is full of the shouts of children, a retreat from loneliness and drudgery and James, James is cast adrift.

Outside, he makes his way into the land Lewis tells him belongs to the house. It is woodland but so long neglected it is impossible to find a path. He can see oak, ash, a lot of beech; some of it old, perhaps as old as the house itself. Trees and branches lie where they have fallen, the wreckage of some long ago storm. Live growth leans into winter death but the dense canopy of leaves makes it too dark for anything to really thrive.

Does Lewis know what he is taking on with this and the house? He is, in general, careful and cautious in his decisions, and is often found demanding facts over poetic speculation. But he will also take things on trust when the future is uncertain, follow his gut. Stick with a brilliant, anarchic chief inspector when his career would be better served with someone more orthodox, take on a spiky, fast-track, god bothering sergeant when there are far easier choices to be made. 

Well, he won’t have to do this alone. James will trust Lewis’ instinct and he will see it through with him. He will roll up his sleeves and do whatever needs to be done. There have to be some advantages to being saddled with a disciple.

He finds him sitting on a stone bench at the back of the house and joins him there. 

“So what, do you think I’m mad?” Lewis asks.

“A bit,” he admits. “I mean we’ve both watched enough Channel Four to know it’ll spend six years looking like the Somme before it’s done and cost three times as much as you’ve ever earned. But it is beautiful and it will be worth it.” Lewis is giving him another evaluating look which makes him think he is missing something. “What does Lyn say? Has she seen it?”

“No, I wanted you to see it first.”

“Me? I hope you’re not under the impression I know anything.”

“I’m always surprised by what you know, James, but no, it’s not an expert opinion I’m after. I wanted to ask if you’d be interested in buying this house with me.” James is suddenly unable to breathe. “I’m not saying fifty-fifty, but put in what you can spare and we can own it jointly. It would be yours then to come to by yourself or bring a friend. We could come up together sometimes as well, if you’d like.”

Lewis waits for a reaction and when there isn’t one he keeps talking.

“For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not asking because I need your money; that’s all covered. I’m asking because I see you as more than a colleague, more than a friend and I want you in my life when I’m not a policeman anymore. To be honest with you, even if you don’t want to buy it with me, I’d like you to think of it as home.

“I know what I’m taking on and I’d understand if you didn’t feel you could give the time to it. But I think it would be a good thing for you.” Lewis focuses on the distant horizon, clasping his hands in front of him. “I said yesterday you needed a partner and you didn’t tell me to mind my own business, which was good of you as I’m guessing you don’t agree. You can’t deny though, you need something that isn’t work. I don’t want you to go like Morse, drinking yourself to death. I see it in you sometimes and it scares me. You need something to love, I think that’s in your nature too. Something to attach all that passion and intelligence of yours to. I wondered if you’d want to love this house with me. Say something, man.”

But James is not going to be able to speak for a while. He stares at the ground and tries not to show exactly how overwhelmed he is. He doesn’t succeed. “All right,” Lewis says. “Think about it and tell me later.

“You know, this place was a policeman’s house before.” Lewis says, sitting back to enjoy the late afternoon sun. “They don’t know much about the original owners but Smith’s relative took it over at the turn of the nineteenth century. Police work goes back a long way in the family and the first Smith was the constable for the villages round here.”

“We’ll have to grow handlebar moustaches to properly remember him.” The sentence is ambitious and his voice breaks before he reaches its end. Lewis gives him a gentle smile.

“This Smith never married and it seems he lived here with a male colleague for many years. When they died, sometime before the Second World War there was no will and half a dozen nephews and nieces reckoned they had a claim on it. That’s what started the problems in the family.”

James walks the perimeter of the house, collecting dust and pollen on his suit where the vegetation closes in. He can already see how the house will be when it is restored to its old dignity with rich colours and solid furniture, roses and hollyhocks blossoming in the garden, deer wandering the little wood. The house will defy the attempts of Lewis’ grandchildren to map and fully explore it, a new spell will be woven into the ancient ones. In winter, when there is snow on the ground and on the branches of the trees, there is a fire burning in the grate and two armchairs. 

The doctrine of signatures posits that God marked living objects with a sign to show their purpose. Could a house, a thing made of fired earth, be said to have life? Could it have its own signature, encrypted with healing properties? A wizard’s house with charms knitted into its fabric might. An Edwardian policeman’s house, a house which has spent half a century folding itself into the elements.

It is not a scientific hypotheses to be tested, he will not make that mistake. Sometimes you go with faith and not reason. This was something Ockham knew and Inspector Lewis knows and the Snark hunters never learn. Sometimes dragging truth into the light of day and holding it up to forensic examination just raises more questions than can ever be answered. While a truth left in the shadows retains its purity. If he knows this then maybe he can be saved.

He finds Lewis examining one of the apple trees.

“If you’re sure, sir, I’d like to buy this house with you.”

Having agreed to a financial arrangement more complex than taking turns to get the coffees in, James assumes the next step will be a frank discussion of his credit worthiness but Lewis just smiles warmly and says, “That’s bloody brilliant.”

They have been making plans and not noticing the time passing or the sun setting when Lewis tells him it is time to go.

“Where now? What else have you bought? Isn’t one derelict spider sanctuary enough?”

Lewis says he owes him an ice cream, but he’ll make it a pint back in Oxford if preferred.

Later, when he is alone, he starts working. He researches books on restoring Victorian houses and orders one about rehabilitating woodland. Lewis says they can’t take anything for granted until contracts are exchanged but it is impossible to resist the plunge into this unknown ocean.

Exchanging contracts seems an occupation appropriate to an older, slower century. He can see Constable Smith buttoned into his morning coat for a meeting with his solicitor, a nervous blot of ink and a scratching nib, sipping a glass of port to mark the occasion. How was the negotiation with his colleague managed? James imagines two shy men and a conversation as forthright as the era allowed. Here in this inexplicable house, hidden in a forest, we will make our life.

He imagines his own signature next to Lewis’ on their contract. Will this better define his place in Lewis’ life? Contracts are intended as precise and unarguable documents of record but Lewis offers him a home and can’t quite look at him as he does it.

Coded messages pass constantly between them. Some are resistant to interpretation, or so James has been able to persuade himself. Ockham’s razor expresses a principle of economy. Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. He sometimes imagines Inspector Lewis’ lips on his, the warmth of his strong, compact body against his own. He understands now this is a simple affirmation of devotion, there is no great mystery.

 

End

 

July 2014


End file.
